


deer

by Prim_the_Amazing



Category: The Dragon Prince (Cartoon)
Genre: Dark Magic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-16
Updated: 2019-02-16
Packaged: 2019-10-29 21:41:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17816000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prim_the_Amazing/pseuds/Prim_the_Amazing
Summary: She strokes the deer’s muzzle, gentle and soothing. It leans into it, taking a step closer to her. It’s really, awfully cute. Claudia prefers the spells with the bugs and the snakes and the less adorable animals. But she’s still a dark mage. She’s still practical. She’s still her father’s daughter.And Soren’s still her brother.She lunges at the deer, forces it up with a grunt onto its hind legs as it starts to panic and struggle against her, twisting and bucking, small dainty looking hooves hitting her ribs and stomach with a shocking amount of force. She starts chanting and slips the dagger that she’d slipped up her sleeve down into her hand and rakes it in a broad, deep movement across its neck. It makes scared, pained, terrible noises as it starts to bleed, thick and fast and red, but she doesn’t stop, doesn’t let it go.Claudia puts her mouth to its neck, and starts to drink.





	deer

She strokes the deer’s muzzle, gentle and soothing. It leans into it, taking a step closer to her. It’s really, awfully cute. Claudia prefers the spells with the bugs and the snakes and the less adorable animals. But she’s still a dark mage. She’s still practical. She’s still her father’s daughter. 

And Soren’s still her brother. 

She lunges at the deer, forces it up with a grunt onto its hind legs as it starts to panic and struggle against her, twisting and bucking, small dainty looking hooves hitting her ribs and stomach with a shocking amount of force. She starts chanting and slips the dagger that she’d slipped up her sleeve down into her hand and rakes it in a broad, deep movement across its neck. It makes scared, pained, terrible noises as it starts to bleed, thick and fast and red, but she doesn’t stop, doesn’t let it go. 

Claudia puts her mouth to its neck, and starts to drink. 

 

Soren is bruised and sore and  _ moving.  _ Standing. Leaned heavily against her, but standing. He can’t stop smiling despite how it clearly pulls against his bruises, and neither can she. 

“You, a  _ poet,” _ she teases. 

“Hey, I could’ve been good!” he defends himself, but she can tell that not even he really believes it. Soren’s talents have always been with the sword, and he knows it. 

He’d just been desperate, was all. _ I’ll be a poet, _ he’d said,  _ and everyone will come visit me to listen to them.  _ He’d been smiling at her, insisting that he’d be alright, that he was happy, that he could live like that. He hadn’t been able to move, nothing to rely on but his wits and words, things that have never been as sharp for him as his sword. He just hadn’t wanted to be left alone, paralyzed and abandoned, obsolete, gathering dust in some dark room as the world moved on without him, forgotten. 

“I know words, okay, some that are even kinda long and pretty, I listen when dad talks, alright, most of the time at lea-- oh my god. Clauds, don’t cry. What’s wrong? I’m fine now, look!” He straightens up where he’s leaning against her, gesturing down at himself, smiling at her desperately. 

She sniffs, swallows down a sob, rubs roughly at her face and smiles up at him, wobbly and blotchy. “It’s happy crying, you doofus,” she says, voice nasally with snot. She sniffles again. 

Soren relaxes again, just a bit. He cuffs her on her head, far from as hard as he normally would, weakened. She misses his too rough noogies already. 

“Thank you, Claudia,” he says, a depth of sincerity and earnestness to the words, his gaze. He smiles at her, and there’s love there. Her chest aches. Her eyes burn. When she swallows, her throat clicks. 

“No problem,” she says, voice wavering, and she leans against him, eyes closed against the tears she can’t stop. 

He feels as warm as an oven against her ice cold skin. 

 

Claudia’s never done a spell like that before. Killed something, and then kept the dark energy of its dying moments inside of herself, its essence, not absorbing it, not using it. Just holding it in stasis, holding the spell for so long, walking from the forest to the infirmary, slow measured steps as she held onto the energy with a firm iron will. It had felt like holding her breath, with how desperate the instinctive, animal part of her had been to release it, get it away from herself. But while the body wants to breathe, the mind knows that opening your mouth underneath the water means drowning, means death. Her body thought it needed to get away from the deer’s death, its life, its harvested soul, but Claudia had known better. She had been holding Soren’s happiness within herself. 

Her father’s lessons had paid off well. She had fought tooth and nail against what so much of herself told her was wrong, and she used it to make something that felt nothing but right. Soren walking at her side, talking, breathing, laughing, fighting. 

She’s never done dark magic quite like that before, but it was the right decision. She made something beautiful happen with it. Callum doesn’t know what he’s talking about, his mind twisted by that prejudiced elf’s words. Dark magic’s  _ great.  _

“Sit any closer to that campfire and you’ll set yourself on fire,” Soren says, and she feels that flash of happiness as she looks at him even as she scrunches up her face at him. 

“I have things for taking care of fire,” she says. 

“I don’t need details,” he says. 

“It’s a cockatrice’s testic--”

“LA LA I’M NOT LISTENING,” he hollers, hands over his ears. 

She snickers and inches a little closer to the fire. She rubs her hands together, held close to the flames. She’s wearing the cloak that she’d packed in case their mission ran long enough for the autumn chill to roll across the land, even though the leaves are still on the trees. She shivers even as the flames almost lick at her skin. She’s cold. 

As cold as a deer corpse, left to cool in a clearing without a soul to warm it. 

 

A week later, Claudia starts to feel like she’s finally thawing. She even foregoes the cloak as she mounts her horse that morning. 

And then two hours later, Soren falls off his horse. 

She gasps, and then bursts into laughter as Soren groans. 

“What’s the matter,” she asks, wiping tears away, “fall asleep from the boredom?” 

“My concentration just slipped!” he says, flushing, jumping to his feet. Or at least, he tries. He stumbles, trips, falls back down the ground. 

This is where she’s supposed to laugh at him some more, but she feels abrupt dread clench in her stomach instead. 

Soren is an excellent rider. She can’t remember him falling from his steed even once, since he was a little boy. 

He gets to his feet, slow, clumsy. He frowns down at himself, like his body’s betrayed him. “Legs must’ve fallen asleep,” he mutters. 

_ Dark magic requires a price, _ her father had told her. 

Of course just one measly deer isn’t enough to buy back her brother’s body. 

“Yeah,” she says, and steels herself to do what she has to. She can be practical. 

 

Soren’s always been a deep sleeper, and absolutely terrible at faking. He  _ still  _ insists that he isn’t a snorer. She waits until his breathing starts rumbling, and she slips out of her sleep pack and into the woods. 

He’d never asked her what she’d used to cast the spell that saved him. He doesn’t tend to want details about her dark magic. Even if he’d had, she’d tell him what she’d told the boy king. _ Just milk fruit.  _ Absolutely idiotic, nonsensical. Anyone with a scrap of knowledge about proper magic could see through a lie like that. Plant life can only be used for the weakest, least useful spells, like lighting a candle wick or closing a door. 

She crushes some beetle eyes in her hand, uses them to have the eyes of a nocturnal beast for just a few hours. A torch would just scare the animals away. 

She kills three deer this time. After the first one, her skin and hair crackle with magic. There’s no sneaking up to the other two, all soft voiced and averted eyes to lure them in. All the animals can scent the death on her. But that’s fine. She just uses some of the energy-magic-soul within her to run like a predator, like something with sharp teeth and claws, the forest blurring past her as her vision tunnels until the fleeing, terrified deer are her entire world, and she pounces on them and wrestles them down to the ground, ripping their throats open with her teeth. 

The woods are quiet as she paces back to their camp, everything living for miles having fled away from her. She is quiet and steady, holds onto the energy with _ intense _ calm. She is steel. She is unyielding. She feels like her skin is going to split open like an overripe fruit, and all of the magic and blood and death inside of her is going to come spilling out of her and soak into the earth beneath her, poisoning the soil, nothing growing there ever again. 

But that would be a waste. She holds her breath until she comes upon their camp, her sleeping brother with a body that is failing him, and she pours it all into him without waking him and she screams and he screams and she pours and pours until she is empty, drained, hollow, collapsed. 

 

“Up and at ‘em, Clauds!” 

She wakes up to Soren’s chipper voice. She tilts her head slightly in his direction (her migraine spikes) and squints her eyes open (the light burns) and there he is, doing warm up stretches, limber and smiling. She smiles back, small and tired. He doesn’t remember. 

“I think I’m a bit under the weather, Sor-Sor,” she croaks. 

He frowns. “Well, that’s no good.” 

“Mmm,” she hums. “Help me up.” 

He does. His hands are so warm. He pulls her up, and she groans as he does, loud and pained. She’s never felt so stiff in her entire life, like her whole body is one solid piece with no joints that are meant to move. Like a statue who will break if it tries to move from its frozen position. 

(“Rigor mortis,” her dad says, guiding her hands to the bird they killed yesterday. “Specimens that have been dead for long enough for it to set in are rarely useful for anything, little life still clinging to it. The fresher, the better.”

It felt stiff, more like a doll than something made of meat.)

“Wow, you’re  _ really _ pale,” Soren says. “You look like a corpse.” 

A flash of fear and anger. 

“Don’t say that,” she snaps, and for a moment she sounds exactly like their father. “It’s morbid.” 

_ “You’re _ telling  _ me _ not to be morbid?” 

“That’s different,” she grumbles. “At least I’m cheerful about it.” 

He has to help her up onto her horse. He swings onto his in one smooth movement. 

Her body aches like a frozen thing, the warm sunshine barely having any effect. Soren hums, occasionally shooting her a concerned look. 

Dark magic has a price. It’s fine. This is worth it. This will pass. 

 

It passes. So does the magic on Soren. His hands grow clumsy, fumbling, his deftness and skill fading. He looks down at them with confused distress, and her heart breaks a little. He’s her brother. She’ll fix him. 

“I’m just going out to get some ingredients,” she says casually, and he grunts, not looking away from his hands that he’s accidentally nicked again with his knife. 

They’re by a swamp, this time. No deer. 

She kills an alligator that’s stupid enough to try and kill her first, instead. Her dagger shears through its tough hide with a little extra magical oomph to it, and she dives into the water with its blood on her hands and arms and face and chest. She lets some of its essence flow into her so she can open her eyes in the murky water and see, can swim like she was born for it, her breath held with ease. She kills four fish, quick things, and then she snaps three birds from above the surface of the water. She wades out of the waters hours later, smelling like death and rot and swamp, the magic in her crackling so hot that she’s dry within seconds. She stalks, overflowing with energy. 

Soren’s still awake when she finds him. He looks at her, pales, goes to his feet, wide eyed and disturbed, stepping away from her as she approaches. There’s no time to stop and smile, to talk and ask. There’s too much inside of her demanding to be released, and if she keeps it in for a second longer then it’ll  _ tear her apart. _ He wants this, anyways. He wants to be himself, healthy and whole and competent, no matter what he says. 

No matter how he screams. 

 

She wakes up on the ground. She opens her eyes and sits up. 

It doesn’t hurt, this time. She rubs her fingers against each other. Digs her thumb nail down into the flesh next to her pointer finger nail as hard as she can until blood wells and beads. 

Nothing. She’s numb. She smiles. It’s an interesting development. 

“Claudia.” 

She looks up. Soren’s sitting on a rock more than five feet away from her, looking tense and a little scared. But he’s still here. He didn’t leave while she was out of it. 

Soren’s always been scared by dark magic, but he’s still her big brother. He’d never abandon her. And she’d never abandon him. That’s what this is all about. She smiles at him, and he smiles back at her reflexively, something in him looking like it relaxes a little bit despite himself. He’s got dark circles underneath his eyes, poor thing. 

“What  _ was _ that?” he asks. 

“Sor-Sor, I’m sorry if I scared you.” 

“I wasn’t scared,” he says defensively.

“Okay.” She grins, indulgent. “It’s just… you were losing your body again. Like before.” 

He straightens, brow furrowing with worry. “I thought you fixed that.” 

“I did… but it looks like it isn’t a  _ permanent  _ fix. It fades with time. But Soren, it’s not a big deal! I can just cast the spell over again! And if I can just get a really good ingredient, then I can cast the spell for  _ forever.”  _

He frowns, clearly thinking hard. “A really good ingredient… like… what?” 

She smiles. “Let me think about that. Magic’s my thing, Sor-Sor.” 

She stands up and walks over to him, and he doesn’t shy away from her. Of course not, she’s his little sister. 

“I’ll handle it,” she vows. “You can count on me.” 

She leans down and hugs him, and he hugs her back. 

She can’t even feel it. 

 

A really good ingredient. She kills birds, fish, deer, alligators, crocodiles, banthers, mountain lions, dogs, cats, anything she can get her hands on. She fills him up with so much life that he’s stronger than he’s ever been, than any human should ever be, and he laughs with joy and excitement as he hauls a boulder over his head. 

“Bet I could slay a dragon now!” he boasts, tossing it aside with a ground shaking crash. 

Claudia smiles, and thinks about what she’d do to that red dragon that hurt her brother if she ever sees it again. She’d tear it into so many pieces that it couldn’t even be used for ingredients. 

It isn’t enough. She’s a better mage than she’s ever been. She can  _ feel  _ it now, how the magic leaks out of him like he’s a barrel with a hole. She needs something better. Something bigger. 

She’s started using glamours to cover up her dark eyes and gray skin, her stark blue veins, her cracked lips, the blood drying underneath her fingernails, the stench of herself. Soren is squeamish. It’s fun to dangle a slug in his face sometimes, but she doesn’t want for him to shy away from  _ her.  _

She remembers the way that she’d solemnly stroked that first deer’s muzzle, the way that she’d sincerely apologized to it as she looked into its eyes. She remembers it like it was a different life. It feels so distant now. She can’t remember the feelings that had coursed through her at the time. She can only recall the words she’d said, the way her hands had moved, like she’s an outside observer of herself. Like she’s a stranger. 

 

_ The greater the sacrifice, the greater the effect,  _ her father had said. 

_ The fresher, the better,  _ he’d said. 

Claudia is practical. 

 

Soren is asleep. The moon is full, bathing their campsite in soft light. Her glamours aren’t up, and what she intends to use is squirming away from her, whimpering. She’d glued its tongue to the roof of its mouth with magic so that it couldn’t wake Soren. Not that there’s much of a chance of it; she’d slipped a powder into his drinks during supper, to make sure that he’d sleep through it. It’s just easier this way. Soren is squeamish. 

She looks into the thing’s, the man’s eyes, the way she had with the deer. She makes herself stroke the side of its--his--face, and the man cringes away from the touch. She tries to conjure up the solemn and determined feelings that she’s sure are appropriate. 

She can only think about how long  _ this  _ sacrifice will last for her brother. A long time, surely. 

She shrugs, and rips the man’s throat out with her hand. His blood splatters onto Soren’s sleeping face, drugged so deeply that he doesn’t even snore or shift. With a spark of will from herself, the blood soaks into Soren’s skin like it’s cloth, staining it red before it sinks down underneath the surface. The man chokes, struggles, weak and fruitless. She makes sure that he gets as much of his blood as possible on Soren, coaxes it out of him with pulls of magic. When he’s empty, she lets him fall, and with a wave of her hand the earth opens up and swallows him, not leaving a trace behind. 

She’s stronger now. So is Soren. He glows with health, even in his sleep. She smiles, her body cold and numb. 

Callum is so, so wrong. There’s nothing better in the world than dark magic. It can fix even the worst of mistakes. 


End file.
